Not too bad tofu

Er..Terri posted a counter-argument to her earlier post:


Thanks for your concern Terri, but unfortunately, you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Dr Joseph Mercola appears to be a well-known sensationalist and peddlar of fake cures, who has received formal warnings from the FDA (the US Food and Drug Agency) about making illegal claims in his newsletter, detailed here: http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/mercola.html

My suspicion is that in the same way that the big tobacco companies employed a lot of scientists to cast doubt on the tobacco-cancer link, the big meat production companies are spending money on propaganda too. Mercola's piece has a clear anti-vegetarian subtext, e.g.: "Zinc deficiency can cause a "spacey" feeling that some vegetarians may mistake for the "high" of spiritual enlightenment." and the rather dubious claim that somehow the increased height of second-generation Japanese immigrants to the US means they are malnourished and "frequently suffer rickets, stunting and other growth problems" and that this is somehow connected to not eating enough meat -- is ludicrous! Firstly, a paragraph starting "Some investigators postulate that..." is the kind of vague appeal to authority I'd expect from a lazy journalist or one of my students writing an exam essay, not from a supposed expert and authority on nutrition. Secondly, any "growth problems" arising from a switch from a Japanese diet to an American one would happen despite (or perhaps because of) a huge increase in meat consumption. Americans consume more meat than any other nationality in the world, and many times more today than their own grandparents did. These are uncontrovertial statistics. It seems absurd to lay large-scale health problems at the door of soya.

I haven't time today to try and research or refute all of Mercola's claims and aspersions about soya, but I can assure you that I'm not going to stop eating tofu on the say so of a medical entrepreneur. My recommendation to you and your friends Terri is to carry on eating foods that are a substantial part of one of the healthiest diets in the world (Japanese) until a more authoritative body such as the FDA issues a warning.

Oh, and a parting shot: if you think you'll eat less soya by eating meat instead of tempeh, you'll be mistaken: the vast majority of all the soya bean grown is fed to livestock.

Best of luck with your dietary choices,

Max